Agitators on the Black Desert subreddit are attempting to whip up press and players over a range of grievances players have with Kakao, the western publisher of the Pearl Abyss MMORPG. Complaints range from the ongoing and well-documented lag problems and bugs to misapplied bans and database compromises.

The biggest post on the subreddit as I type this, however, as well as one of the biggest in a long time, is a Valentine’s poem dedicated to Kakao calling it a “P2W scam.” Readers will recall that Black Desert has been fending off pay-to-win accusations since even before its western launch in 2016.

Still other players are petitioning Kakao for two-factor authentication, which they argue will not only make accounts more secure but reduce the number of gamers whose accounts are stolen and then banned by Kakao with no chance of appeal when the thieves use third-party software.

Playing since CB near 500GS i only spended the 30 dollars to enter the CB and other 30 plus to buy a costume isn’t p2w is convenience thats all the people who tell all time is p2w are dudes whit barely 300< GS whit no more than 50 hours ingame. Stop the excuses and learn to play if u dont like it go to solo games. (Sorry for the bad english)

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1 year ago

Reader

Viraldi

October 2017 Review MMO-RNG/Issues

This has the best character customisation, but lacks wardrobe visual progression

The notifications kills immersion, which you should set off

The user interface is not completely customisable, but they can be set off

There are some quests or knowledge only obtainable during nighttime in-game

There are activities which require lots of energy, reminding you of Farmville

The contribution points are used to invest in gathering nodes or city houses

The amity minigame with NPCs consumes a lot of energy if no solution

The deaths of your horse in combat zones will affect the quality of the foal

The black stones are used to enhance armor and weapons from +0 to +15, concentrated magical black stones [ CMBS ] are used to enhance above +15; if enhancing DUO to TRI, TRI to TET, or TET to PEN fails, you always downgrade by one tier

The failed enhancements of any gear accrues protection from bad luck, in a sense, by +1 [ +3 with CMBS ] in which your next enhancement, if done efficiently, may successfully enhance another gear, with RNG considered; this introduces the failstacking method for which you can find a tutorial

[ RNG / Issues ]

There is an element of RNG in gear progression: you could lose billions in assets, ultimately time spent, in trying to upgrade one single part of your gear, quite noticeably with accessories; for example, use +0 base accessory to upgrade the same type of accessory or fail and lose both; to get a better sense of loss: [ +0 Ring of Crescent Guardian costs ~40M; V PEN: Ring of Crescent Guardian costs ~6.9B ] and because the highest tiers are rarely obtained or sold, their value could be tenfold that of its market price

There is an element of RNG in horsebreeding: you might get lousy skills as you level up a horse you have tamed or trained for weeks, or a horsebreed that cannot obtain staple skills, such as instant acceleration, drift, and s: instant acceleration;

There is an element of RNG in amity minigame: there is a chance to trigger the worst requirements [ consecutive failures ] which, if unmet, will use energy for no amity gain;

There is an element of RNG in quest drops or knowledge gain: there is a small % drop chance for quest items or knowledge gain that may keep you in one area for hours to complete, [ smaller % if you are male character ] in Valencia questline;

There is an element of RNG in crystal losses: there is a chance to lose expensive gems on death by PvE mobs or bandits;

There is an element of RNG ( possibly wrong ) in gear tier drops: there is a chance to drop a tier in accessories ( possibly wrong ) or weapons and armor if you have negative karma ( possibly wrong ) and died by PvE mobs or bandits;

There is an element of RNG in workers: there is 1 in 1,000 probability to hire an Artisan [ hopefully Human or Goblin ] worker from the worker NPC, with 5 energy required to view another worker contract; there is a big chance to fail promotions from Professional to Artisan, [ only one worker at a time can undergo the promotion ] which takes up 24 hours, even if you hit level 25 [ that takes days to reach ] to reduce failure; and there is RNG for worker skill changes which are allowed at level 30.5;

There is an element of RNG in bargaining traders: you consume energy to play the minigame to sell trade items for a profit by tipping the scales in balance;

There is an element of RNG in marketplace: sometimes items go through [ highest bidder wins ] preorder phase, which skips the bid phase for players to enter the lottery; if not, the fastest click [ hence: lag ] will win post-bid phase;

There is an element of RNG in permastats: for the sake of diversity, stats will always be different; if you create two of the same classes, one may receive fewer gain [ HP/WP/MP/SP ] per level, but also hidden stats to compensate;

This game heavily punishes you on PvE deaths ( usually AFK ) at higher levels; for example, 1-2% at level 62, [ uncontested rotation, efficient mobs, best buffs, etc. considered ] is about 8 to 16 hours of mob grinding that you lose;

The Ghillie outfit, exclusive cash shop item, is a camouflage that hides player names even during PvP, and Diving Suit is probably necessary to complete Margoria questlines;

The Value Pack and pets can be sold and bought from in-game marketplace, but not the costumes, all outfits, inventory expansions, elion’s tear, weight limit increase, maids, storage expansions, worker lodging expansions, etc. which provide advantages and conveniences that reduces contribution point usage;

The marketplace lag is already stressful with bidding system, which prevents players from purchasing old items until the cheapest items in bidding phase has ended;

The user interface for friends list ( and others ) is dreadful: you do not know in which current channel your friends are, etc.

[ Suggestions ]

This is based on my limited* activities to benefit me as someone who mostly plays alone

I would like my workers to recover stamina [ beer ] on their own from the storage

I love the AFK lifeskilling, auto-pathing, node management, mob grinding fests, typical RNG loots, and 1v1 PvP, but I 99.9% think the issues will not be addressed and half the suggestions will never happen, so I cannot guarantee how long I am willing to tolerate the issues. I heard we were promised to catch up at the beginning of this year, but we are behind eight months of content, because of marketing strategies.

tl;dr MMORNG

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1 year ago

Reader

Life_Isnt_Just_Dank_Memes

My connection has been spotty and the game makers keep blaming it on my ISP even though this has happened with them and other ISPs in the past. For the last two weeks plus I have been unable to play most days due to disconnects and so I have decided to cease spending money on the game. It’s really ad rag because I adore this game, but they refuse to admit that the issue is theirs.

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1 year ago

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Arktouros

This is the real issue that should be discussed.

The whole “Leaseweb told us it’s your ISP so we’re telling you it’s your ISP” thing is super bad on them and I’ve never seen a game company do that. It’s incredibly unprofessional of them and they need to have sorted this out over a year ago when the issues started.

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1 year ago

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Xijit

That is why I quit, like before the first year was up, and I pre-ordered with the $100 pack … was not easy to walk away from a good $250 investment in the game (I hve no issue with spending in the cash shop when the returns are not RNG), but between the balance issues & the economy nerfs designed to punish players for trying to play the game as a crafter / pacifist & then the simple fact that I couldn’t even log on: fuck ’em.

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1 year ago

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squid

That micro-managed economy was such bullshit. The developer shouldn’t control the price of every item in the game for sales between players.

I get why they did it, but I’d have rather had the goldsellers.

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1 year ago

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Xijit

to an extent, it works … to the extent that they did it: it was fucking horse shit that clearly was being molded to pressure more players into grinding over crafting by intentionally killing the profitability of everything that wasn’t combat related.

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1 year ago

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rafael12104

Agitators? Heh. Every mmo that I have played has agitators or as others call them whiners and or malcontents.

Hey, I haven’t played BDO for months so, I don’t know all the details around their issues. But what I do know is that their complaints aren’t unique. Server lag? bugs? p2w? Lol! Browse any major title and you will find these issues.

So, meh…

Oh, didn’t they have a twitch-a-thon just last month with a great many ultimatums?

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1 year ago

Reader

Greaterdivinity

Man, I don’t know why more games don’t support two-factor authentication. Google Authenticator is easy enough to use if you don’t want to build a new one, and it’s frustrating and worrysome as a player not having it enabled across the board.

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1 year ago

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khaoslbc

The most glaring issue is the “Kamaslyvia Book,” this book increases the loot a player gets from all activities by 20%. This means more silver, rare drops and etc. It also increases a player energy gain by 3 a minute; energy in BDO is a vital resource that players use to gather, roll a npc for boss items and other activities. The pricing for these books are $12.50 for 15 days, so $25 usd for a month and an extra $15 for a value pack, which is almost like a subscription fee and is mandatory if you want to be competitive. So you are looking at spending $40 usd a month if you want to be playing on even grounds. Which is nonsense.

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1 year ago

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Toy Clown

It’s the people that want to be competitive “now” that are having the hardest time with BDO. It’s something people who enjoy PvP suffer from in many MMOs that don’t let them jump into the action immediately, like a MOBA, for example.

I’ve been playing BDO since its release and it’s a game I enjoy immensely. I have taken a couple of breaks lasting a few months each, the latest lasted 6 months, but I keep coming back because the game is really fun to me. I value that as it means I have 24/7 entertainment at my fingertips.

Do I have issue with paying for expensive items? My bane has always been the overpriced outfits, but the pay off is I don’t buy that many as I don’t care for the over-sexualized aesthetics of most of the female ones, so I save a lot of money there.

But for anything else, I support the game. Sometimes I buy value packs, although I don’t really need them anymore. You can get to a point where you don’t need to use them. You can get by on the freebie pets they give out occasionally. If you take advantage of the free storage maid you get at 52 or 53, you don’t have to worry about getting overweight, especially combined with using a horse’s pack storage. BDO has upped the number of inventory slots they give out while doing the main scenario quest to 56. I don’t have to buy space on my new characters anymore, which is encouraging to make alts now. Between the new General, Asura and Roaring Magical armor and weapons given out by the black spirit quests, they put you in the action sooner, too. With patience, you can build your own gear, or figure out ways to make silver very easily to buy it. To me, gearing up in the game is no more time-consuming than leveling a character up in a traditional MMO, taking them through content and raids for gear.

The biggest problem BDO has is the type of playerbase they’ve attracted — and who also chase off supportive happy players from the forums — and who have no perspective except for their own. I do have empathy for them, as they’ve paid out a lot of cash they “thought” they needed to pay, when they never really had to.

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1 year ago

Reader

Antheriel

I have been playing BDO since launch, all through all the P2W protests. The simple fact is that, if you want to be competitive at the top end of the ladder, you must pay. Why? Because someone spent millions of dollars to create and maintain this game for you and that means players have to pay to play it. You can spend $5 to buy the game and never pay another cent, but you will face inconveniences. Why? Because $5 is not a fair price to pay for a massive game with ongoing development and server infrastructure.

I’m super tired of people complaining that they don’t like subscriptions, then complaining that they don’t like paying for game essentials on a per-item basis, all the while pretending that a game can survive based entirely on selling cosmetic items.

If you want to play the game, expect to pass the developers something like $15/month in some form. That’s how games that are in constant development, with ongoing infrastructure costs, work. If that isn’t okay with you, it’s totally kosher with everyone if you want to just play single-player games.

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1 year ago

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MKlwr

And that is all fine and good. But BDO’s “competitiveness” fee is far greater than $15 a month. That’s just the value pack.
That’s not counting Artisan’s memories, pets, outfits, weight, inventory, branding of items and a myriad of other things.

I’m not a competitive player so I don’t need to stress about it, but I’ve spent way more than $15/mo and I don’t even consider myself a big spender.

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1 year ago

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Antheriel

I understand. I’m also not a competitive player, and I have probably averaged close to $15/month. But the thing is, once we abandoned subscriptions, we have to accept that some people are going to have to pay more because we opened the door to legions of people who will pay less, while still incurring costs for the developers.

BDO’s prices don’t seem nuts to me. I buy my value packs on the auction house, which gives me a month of “subscription” perks for the price of maybe 5 hours’ in-game labour. I spend real cash to get other things I can’t buy with in-game money.

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1 year ago

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Arktouros

It’s really not though.

Everything, so far, they’ve sold via the cash shop has largely come back to time efficiency or time savings. However even if we give it some big easy number for the sake of math and say you can buy 200% time efficiency (IE: You make 2x as much wealth in same time frame) and go grind for 2 hours a night you’re still going to be beaten by the guy who goes out and grinds for 5 hours a night. Add on the fact that many of those purchases are one time only and have been reduced in significance (IE: They’ve nerfed the weight on most trash loot in the game at many spots making weight not a huge factor) and it becomes less and less of a factor.

I think the thing is people have forgotten what a real P2W game looks like because they’re so uncommon today. Paying for time advantages just doesn’t equate to pay2win. P2W systems are easily identifiable beacuse whomever has the biggest wallet has the biggest dick in game. That doesn’t mean BDO can’t get there, and in fact we’ve always been one change away from transitioning to that system but we’re just not there yet.

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1 year ago

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Sayori

“inconveniences”. Yeah, sure thing.

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1 year ago

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Melissa McDonald

Great post. Wish I could +10 that.

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1 year ago

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En Grosse

Still a gankfest ^^

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1 year ago

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Melissa McDonald

How can a game that doesn’t even allow PvP until high level be a gankfest?

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1 year ago

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MrNude

Show me one western MMO that isn’t P2W….. They simply don’t mind it at all in countries like China/Korea/Japan like most of us do in the US/UK.